The Strange Situation was a testing procedure created by Mary Ainsworth et al. in 1978 to measure attachment. The objectives of this study were to assess the behavior of infants aged 9 to 18 months under mild stress conditions to test stranger anxiety, separation anxiety, and the secure base concept. Ainsworth also assessed individual differences between mother-child pairs in terms of the quality of their attachments. The sample consisted of 100 middle-class American infants aged 9 to 18 months and their mothers. They were assessed in an 8-stage controlled observational study and the infant's behavior was recorded after each stage. The first step consisted of the infant and caregiver entering the unfamiliar room, followed briefly by encouraging the infant to explore the new environment. After approximately 3 minutes, a stranger enters, speaks to the caregiver, and attempts to interact with the infant. Then the mother leaves the room and the stranger offers comfort to the child if necessary. The caregiver then enters the room after 3 minutes and offers comfort to the infant if necessary and the stranger leaves. Shortly after the caregiver leaves, leaving the infant alone, the stranger then returns to offer comfort to the infant. Finally, the caregiver comes in and welcomes the infant. The behaviors tested were proximity seeking, exploration and secure base behavior, anxiety toward strangers, separation anxiety, and reaction to reunion. Three types of attachment have been distinguished; avoiding insecurity, securely attached, and resistant to insecurity. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an Original Essay One of the strengths of Ainsworth's Strange Situation is its high internal validity. Through his use of a controlled condition, Ainsworth was able to control many factors in his experiment. Ainsworth controlled the experiment using the same stranger throughout the study, time spent with/without the infant was assessed, and mother's behavior was monitored. Another strong point of his study is that it was very easily carried out and observed. The study required very little equipment, except for a child-friendly room and toys with which the infant could interact. Thanks to the controlled conditions, the study can be repeated several times to check the consistency of the results. Additionally, the researchers stood behind a one-way mirror and observed the mother-child and stranger-child relationships that occurred. On the other hand, the downside of Ainsworth's Strange Situation is its low external validity. Due to the experiment being performed in an artificial environment, the data cannot be easily applied to the outside world. The artificial environment may have caused distress to the child and therefore affected the results. Another drawback of the study would be its cultural bias. The experiment was performed only on American mothers and infants, which reduces the representativeness of the data because attachments in other cultures may differ from those in the United States. A final drawback of Ainsworth's study is that it only studies mother-child relationships, excluding father-child attachments. In 1981, Main and Weston discovered that children behaved differently in a strange situation depending on which parent they were with. Some children showed insecure attachments to their mothers, but secure attachments to their fathers, showing..